What can I learn from this?

That’s the question I found myself asking over and over when I read William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury. I teach American Literature for a living, I love books, Faulkner is generally considered one of the greatest American writers ever and this novel is his landmark accomplishment, so it seemed like a perfect choice when I picked it off the shelf of a used bookstore in Tacoma, Washington many years ago. The problem is that it’s not an easy read. The Sound and the Fury is written using "stream of consciousness" technique, which is where the writer tells a story through the internal thought process of a character. It’s tricky to keep up with stories that are told in this manner, and Faulkner’s novel makes it even tougher because the whole first section of the novel is written stream-of-consciousness through the eyes of a mentally handicapped man named Benjy Compson.

We’re going to try something a little different in this month’s article. We’re going to examine your personal experience as strength athletes. The writing is going to be mostly about you. There are going to be a lot of rapid-fire questions that you’re going to answer in your mind as you read, and all of this is going to be pointed towards learning some kind of lesson that’s going to make you a better coach or athlete. This is going to be borderline stream-of-consciousness writing, and your job is simply to follow along.

Now, I’m going to make it a little easier on you than William Faulkner made it on me. I’m going to stop at the end of the article and ask the question, "What’s the point?" And because I want you to feel like you’re getting your money’s worth out of your Performance Menu subscription, I’ll go ahead and tell you what the point is when we get there. Knowing that you’re all brainy people, you’ll probably have the underlying message of the article figured out long before I spoon feed it to you.

Maybe this will be a literary accomplishment that rivals Faulkner. Who knows? Maybe one of you will want to nominate me for the Nobel Prize in literature. Or maybe you’ll finish this article and think I’m as mentally handicapped as Benjy Compson. You probably wouldn’t be the first to arrive at that conclusion.

Let’s talk about you.

Where are you going? Where have you been?

First of all, think about what you are. Are you an Olympic weightlifter? Are you a powerlifter? Are you a general strength trainer? Are you a Crossfitter? Are you a coach in addition to one of these other things? Try to assign yourself a certain title. If you participate in a lot of different strength disciplines or roles, which one is most important to you? Just think… if you had to stand up and introduce yourself like addicts do at recovery meetings, where they say "My name is ________, and I’m an alcoholic," what would your classification be? Some of you might just want to call yourselves LIFTERS. That’s fine.

How long have you been doing what you’re doing as an athlete? I’m talking about sustained, focused practice on this particular area that you identified. Who taught you how to do it? Were you self-taught? What would you consider your top accomplishment so far? Think about the high points of what you’ve done. What your top lifts are, what competitions you’ve participated in, things like that. If you had to sit down with a pen and paper and write down your number one most significant achievement in your area, what would it be? Take a minute if you need to, and figure out what it is. It might be a one-rep max in one of the Olympic lifts, it might be a championship you’ve won, it might be a team or athlete you’ve coached or a gym you’ve built from the ground up. Don’t go on reading until you have something specific isolated in your mind.

When you know what your top achievement is, file it away in your brain and remember it. Once you’ve done that, I want you to shift gears slightly and think about the people you train with or compete against on a regular basis. These might be the people in your gym. They might be lifters or athletes from around the state, nation or world. Maybe you have a particular rival; somebody you could point out as being your top competitor. Maybe you hate this person. Maybe you love them. Maybe you think about them when you put your hands on a bar and prepare for a big set, whispering their name as motivation to grind out your reps. Maybe this person doesn’t even know who you are, and it’s your goal to make sure they learn your name and can’t forget it somewhere down the road. Or perhaps this doesn’t apply to you very well because you don’t really feel like you’re in competition with anybody, which is fine too. In that case, just think about other people who train in the same area as you.

Now, go back to your top accomplishment from a few moments ago. Remember it? Okay, now put it together with the people you just named as your competitors, training partners, peers, or whatever. And ask yourself this big question: How do you stack up against others? Are you the best in your area? Maybe you’re the best in your gym, but not in your state. Maybe you’re one of the top two or three in the country, with only a couple of names who are better than you. Maybe you’re a world champion. Be totally honest when you rank yourself. Don’t lie and don’t make excuses. If you’re the weakest lifter in your gym, then just come right out and say it. Make sure you put yourself on a level playing field, though. If you’re a 140-pound woman and you train in a gym full of 220-pound guys, don’t classify them as your peers. Think about the people who are directly comparable to you. If you’re a coach, how does your athlete production compare to the other coaches you know? Make sure you have a solid idea about where you stand in relation to others before you move on to the next paragraph.

Got it figured out? Okay, so how do you feel about where you’re at? Take a second and tell yourself the truth. Are you happy with what you’ve done at this point? Do you feel a sense of pride and self-confidence in your status? Do you feel like you’ve accomplished some of your biggest goals, or are you on the other end of the spectrum? Do you feel embarrassed, like everybody is ahead of you and you’re ashamed of it? Do you consider your accomplishments unimpressive or below average compared to your peers? Are you angry at other people because of your own predicament?

More importantly, how much of your potential do you think you’ve reached? Do you think you’ve used absolutely every ounce of gas you have in your tank? Have you squeezed every drop out of your lemon? If the answer to this question is no, then what has stopped you? Why haven’t you reached the heights you know you could get to? For some of you, it might just be an issue of time. You might be saying to yourself that you know you’re capable of a 300-pound clean and jerk and the only reason you haven’t reached it yet is because you’ve only been training for six months and you’re still working your way up the ladder. That’s acceptable. Hopefully, most of you fit that description. Hopefully, there’s not a darker reason why you’re not getting maximum results from yourself, like laziness or fear.

This next part might sting just a little bit. I want you to think about somebody who does the same thing you do (Olympic lifter, Crossfitter, etc.), but I want you to specifically think about somebody who is better than you despite the fact that they’ve only been training for a short period of time. Let’s go back and look at some of our previous questions for an example. If you said earlier that you’ve been training as a lifter for three years and your top achievement is a 275-pound clean, I want you to think of somebody you know who has only been training for nine months and has already cleaned 315 at the same bodyweight as you (or lighter). This person has less experience than you, and they’ve already been able to accomplish more than you have. Don’t apply any smoke-and-mirrors excuses to this section. You need to pinpoint somebody who has passed you by, despite the fact that they haven’t put in as much time and work as you.

Intermission/personal example I started Olympic lifting in 1990. At the 1998 Senior National Championship, I snatched 330 pounds and clean and jerked 402 pounds in the superheavyweight class. At the time, this was my best competition ever, my highest accomplishment. At this contest, Shane Hamman snatched 385 pounds and clean and jerked 462 in the same weight class as me. I believe he had only been training as an Olympic lifter for around two years at that point. I had been working much longer than he had, and his accomplishments surpassed mine by a country mile. This is the type of situation I want you to personalize. End of intermission.

It’s bothersome to think about this, no doubt about it. The thing that makes this bothersome is when you simply have to admit that somebody else is more talented than you. Despite the fact that you’ve invested a greater time commitment and workload, this other person is going to move ahead of you and enjoy greater rewards than you’ve been able to taste. The thing that makes you angry is that this doesn’t seem fair. The normal perceptions of justice indicate that the people who work the hardest and the longest should be the people who receive the greatest blessings. But the world of strength athletics, like most other areas of our universe, is not based on fairness. If you want justice, look in the dictionary between jerky and juxtapose.

One of the things that can make this whole thing even more irritating is if the person who has moved ahead of you has a detestable personality. When you get beaten by a newbie and that newbie happens to be a mouthy punk, it’ll feel like needles under your toenails. What if your strength training is one of the biggest parts of your life? What if it’s THE biggest part of your life? And despite how much you love it and how much you’ve sacrificed for it, some scumbag with a big mouth is tasting the good life while you get relegated to the back of the bus.

Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe you’ve never dealt with this and your attitude about your training life is completely different from how I’m describing things. Maybe none of this frustration applies to you at all. If that’s the case, good for you. You live in a place called Happyland. And I want you to fully enjoy every aspect of Happyland, truly. But go ahead and read the rest of this article anyway, just in case Happyland is ever invaded by the aforementioned mouthy punks and you have nowhere to run.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

Where do we go from here? What can we learn from any of this? Now that you’ve got a mental image of a competitor who is more talented than you and you’re nice and agitated, what’s the next angle to look at? Why have we spent this time examining ourselves, and how can any of this make us better lifters or coaches? For crying out loud, WHAT’S THE POINT?

Stay with me for a few more minutes. Answer some more questions, and we’ll get to the bottom line soon. First of all, why did you get into the strength game to begin with? What did you want to accomplish? What results were you looking for? Try to come up with a legitimate answer to this. Once you have the answer, ask yourself another question. Did you think those results were going to come to you quickly? Did you think the path you chose was going to be easy? How long did you plan to commit to these goals of yours? Did anybody explain to you, right from the very beginning, that the pursuit of those goals might turn into a lifelong journey? Are you even interested in a lifelong journey? How much do you love what you do?

Now, let’s build up to the climax moment of our little self-exploration. Ask yourself one question, just one tiny little question that should lead to an enormous answer. What can you start doing that will make your journey more successful? Instead of focusing on other athletes and how much weight they’re lifting, turn the focus back towards yourself and examine what you can do to make yourself better. Forget about what other people have. What do YOU have, inside yourself, and what can you do to make forward progress? Obviously, the most immediate answers to this question involve training-related issues. Better training programs, better injury rehab/prehab measures, better dietary practices, better hydration, better sleep scheduling, better learning about the techniques of your sport. Look at all of these topics and figure out how much attention you’re giving to each of them.

As soon as you finish this article, you should sit down with a pen and paper. Make a list of the ten most important aspects of your training life. Then, next to each one of those aspects, give yourself a personal score on a scale of one through ten. A score of ten means that you’re really putting complete concentration and effort into that area, and a score of one means that you basically don’t take it seriously at all. Give yourself the most honest answers you’re capable of, and then ask yourself this question again. What can you start doing that will make your journey more successful?

And I guess I want to finish this article by going one step further, one more step beyond the focus on training issues like stretching, nutrition, and programming. I want you to think about your personality. Think about your life. I want you to ask the big question for a third time, what can you start doing that will make your journey more successful? But now, I want you to apply that question to areas like your self-concept, your attitude, how you interact with others, how much enthusiasm you demonstrate in your life, how many positive things you do or say for somebody else on a daily basis, how often you tell people that you appreciate them. Do you hold the door open for other people when you’re walking into a gas station? Do the most important people in your life know how much they mean to you? Do your training partners feel more energetic and excited when you’re in the gym? If you have people in your life that you love, do you tell them that? If you’re a coach, do your athletes respect you and want to fight their hardest for you? When you think about your future, do you focus on obstacles and negative possibilities? Or do you imagine the great moments of triumph that could happen if you take some risks and strengthen your work ethic?

William Faulkner, like a lot of great writers, was a big drinker. He would stay sober while he was writing, and then go on powerful benders when he was finished. The characters in The Sound and the Fury were members of a formerly successful Southern family who struggle to cope with their lives as they watch their family’s greatness crumble over the years. Despite the brilliance of the writer and the inspiration of what he produced, there is a dark streak to his body of work. We’re going to turn that dark streak in the opposite direction when we finish reading. We’re going to walk away from this article and start looking for ways to train better, live better, and feel better. We’re going to think of things that will make us happy, because happiness makes your lifts go up. How many things did you do yesterday that made your life better? Honestly, make a mental list right now. When you’re done, think of six things you can do with the rest of this day that will make you a better athlete and a better person.

Once you’ve figured out what those things are, go out and do them.